Stunning Footage Captures The Incredible Moment A Dolphin Gives Birth To Her Calf

Katrl, a Pacific white-sided dolphin living at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium, recently gave birth to a calf. A sight that has never been observed in the wild for this particular species of dolphins, much less ever having been filmed!

After three hours of intense labor, the mixture of nervous and excited chatter from onlookers gave way to gasps and applause as the newborn dolphin calf wriggled with the kick, kick, kick of its tiny tail to the tank’s surface and took its very first breath of air.

Witness the miracle of life unfold in the video below, and don’t worry, it’s not too graphic!

The as-yet-unnamed calf is the first for 29-year-old mother Katrl and it increases the relatively small population of the Pacific white-sided dolphins in North American zoos and aquariums to 16.